City native creates $1 million scholarship helping Brockton students

Marc Larocque Enterprise Staff Writer @Enterprise_Marc

Monday

Sep 16, 2019 at 2:10 PM

A Brockton native turned successful healthcare venture capitalist committed $1 million for a scholarship that will help students from his hometown go to Suffolk Law School. Barry Cosgrove recently made a $1 million commitment to provide scholarships for Suffolk Law students with significant financial need, supporting law students from Brockton.

BROCKTON – Growing up in working-class Brockton, raised by a single mother as one of five boys in a family with little means, Barry Cosgrove didn't imagine himself in the same league as lawyers and businessmen.

"The closest I ever came to a lawyer was carrying golf clubs as a caddy," said Cosgrove, now a successful healthcare venture capitalist.

Cosgrove said a Suffolk Law School education changed all that, providing him to earn a doctoral degree and opening doors to help him eventually become the founder of several successful companies, including Davita, the second largest independent provider of dialysis services in the world. Cosgrove said the evening school program offered by Suffolk allowed him to make it, while simaltaneously working for the Colgate-Palmolive subsidiary Kendall Company to fund his studies, commuting to Boston each day from Brockton.

Now, Cosgrove wants to help provide that same law school experience and education to others from Brockton. To do so, Cosgrove recently made a $1 million commitment to provide scholarships for Suffolk Law students with significant financial need, supporting law students from Brockton, along with others who show a significant interest and knowledge of the Dominican Republic. Cosgrove's donation is creating the Graciela Rojas-Trabal Term Scholarship Fund, named in honor of his wife's grandmother, who was from the Dominican Republic.

"The scholarship is a way of saying thank you to Suffolk for what they did for me and other kids like me, who had a dream but maybe didn't have the opportunity to pursue it," Cosgrove said. "I think a legal education, and the data supports this, is a wonderful way to learn about a lot of things. A lot of us became business executives and owners. I've had classmates go on to become congressmen and judges, all doing very important stuff. But that legal education and experience is instrumental in making that happen."

Cosgrove graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton in 1975, helping to pay for a private school education by working as a golf caddy, he said. Cosgrove, now a Wareham resident, remained heavily involved in Spellman as an adult, as the chairman of the board of trustees, now as chair emeritus. Cosgrove then attended Marquette studying journalism as an undergraduate and graduated from MIT with a masters in 1981, before getting a legal education and beginning his successful career as a health care venture capitalist. Cosgrove's investments have been in technology related to treating kidney failure, he said.

"I just sold a company to Bain Capital," he said. "I've been involved with dialysis for a long time, now trying to come up with products to help people with kidney disease. Having the privilege of being successful in the industry, I'm hoping to come up with ideas to actually help these patients. It's a very difficult thing to bear, it's a very difficult disease."

In addition to the $1 million commitment, Cosgrove said he is pledging to donate 10 percent of all dividends from two upstart companies that he invested in as a venture capitalists. Cosgrove said he considers it extra motivation to make the companies successful.

“I always have in the back of my head that some people who really need help could get help if I built these two companies correctly,” he said.

Cosgrove said Brockton may seem like a rough city with a tough reputation, due to "a few knuckleheads who ruin it for everyone else." But he said there's so much potential in Brockton. And if young people in Brockton have the work ethic, they can gain a law education and become a lawyer or business person, too.

"I took the BAT bus to Ashmont station, took the subway in, worked all day, went to Suffolk at night and took subway home," he said. "It didn't kill me, it won't kill them."

The scholarship Cosgrove's commitment will fund is designed for students who would not qualify for financial aid to cover their education costs, but otherwise wouldn't be able to afford law school.

"It's for kids who not only don't have the money, but their own situation is such they wouldn't be eligible for any other sort of support," Cosgrove said. "It's for kids who wouldn't have a fair chance. This is a chance to give them a fair opportunity for a legal education."

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